Today's legal trials frequently make use of deposition transcripts and closed captioned videos as exhibits that may be used to refresh the recollection of witnesses, impeach witnesses, or in lieu of testimony. Trial judges may require opposing parties to provide affirmative and counter designations in a deposition transcript, set limits on the runtime of video exhibits, and prohibit duplicate exhibits. The requirements set by judges can be imposed late in the trial preparation process or even during trial, leading to an urgent revision process at a difficult time.
Currently, making designations which correspond to deposition testimony of a deposition transcript is primarily a manual process. For example, trial attorneys manually select deposition testimony by highlighting portions of a deposition transcript. At this stage, errors may arise due to multiple trial attorneys designating the same portions of testimony. Then, paralegals manually convert these highlighted portions of the deposition transcript into a table or list of designations indicating the page and line numbers at which the designations begin and end. At this stage, more errors may arise due to typographical errors or due to multiple paralegals using different formats for the designations. Next, a trial technician manually feeds the designations into a video generation program. At this stage, the trial technician may spend significant time identifying and correcting errors, but other errors may also be generated, such as more typographical errors. The transcript/video generation program may then perform limited error checking to ensure that the manual designations are valid before generating a video from the designations. If any errors are found, the transcript/video generation program may identify which designations were found to be invalid. However, current systems are not always accurate with error reporting and it sometimes becomes difficult to pinpoint or ascertain errors that are present in designations. When presented with errors, a trial technician must then manually correct or remove these invalid designations before a processed transcript and/or video can be generated. Such correction may require further inquiries to the designating attorneys/paralegals, which stalls the process of generating the designated testimony documentation or video content. If significant overlapping of designations is present, then the runtime of the video may be a poor estimate of the actual runtime that may be ultimately achieved by removal of overlap. Accordingly, these delays can create further logistical problems because a trial tech is not able to determine run times for the designated content and whether a need to reduce designation scope is present.
Current video transcript systems are further hindered by existing methods of making designations. For example, portions of the video generated by the video generation program may be adjacent to other video portions in time. For example, if one designation corresponds to a part of the deposition transcript that ends at the end of a page, and if another designation corresponds to another part of the deposition transcript that begins at the beginning of the next page, current video generation programs are unable to combine the designations to generate a smooth video transition. In this case, the trial technician must manually delete one of the video portions and extend the other video to obtain the desired video. This manual editing process is time consuming and prone to errors that can lead to loss of data.